Wikisource:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/FAQ

Why not Encyclopædia Britannica?

Why should this be called 1911 Encyclopedia instead of Encyclopædia Britannica?

The first note is to see what Project Gutenberg had to say about the subject:

"The Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia is a reproduction of a 1911 edition of a famous encyclopedia. The text has not been updated. Although the text is in the public domain in the United States, the original publisher still has a valid trademark in the original title of the encyclopedia. The original publisher offered Project Gutenberg a license to use the trademark, but the terms of the license were not consistent with the volunteer noncommercial nature of Project Gutenberg or its primary goal of distributing electronic text with the fewest possible restrictions. In order to avoid the possibility of trademark infringement, all references to the original title and the original publisher have been changed or deleted. Because of numerous references embodying possible trademarks, the entire preface has been omitted. The original publisher of the 1911 print encyclopedia was not and is not involved in any way with the creation, editing or distribution of the Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia. Any errors which may have occurred in the conversion to electronic form can not be attributed in any way to the original publisher. In order to avoid possible future trademark infringements or confusion in the minds of the public, this electronic version should be referred to as the Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia. The name of the original print encyclopedia should not be used in any way in connection with this electronic text."

In a similar vein, the use of the trademark term "Encyclopædia Britannica" should be avoided on Wikisource or all Wikimedia projects, except as general fair-use when refering directly to the publishing company itself. As a result, all references to this project should correctly be called the 1911 Encyclopedia (or some other term as defined by the general user community of this project.)

History of 1911 Encyclopedia

The WikiProject 1911 Encyclopedia is an effort to transfer the content of the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica to a Wiki format.

The proposal for this project was announced on the Wikimedia Meta-wiki as a proposal for a new Mediawiki project. Originally a demo website was created at Wikibooks, but was eventually moved to Wikisource as it fit the goals of Wikisource better.

(More content can and should go here eventually.)

Goals of 1911 Encyclopedia

The goals and aims of this project are to:

• Transfer the content of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica to Wiki format. Each article from the encyclopedia should have its own page.
• Scan and upload images, woodcuts, and illustrations found in this edition which are public domain in nature.
• Encourage the proofreading of the content to conform with the textual content of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
• Encourage participation with Distributed Proofreading to get the text of this encyclopedia transfered to electronic format.
• Provide original source material for content in Wikipedia and as reference work there and elsewhere.
• Wikify the content of this encyclopedia, including hyperlinks between articles, and general links to current knowledge (Wikipedia).